As you have noticed, there are a lot of Laureus fans who enjoy their beautiful new Yacht Club Laureus. And they are not to blame since it's a magnificent watch!

For me, the Yacht Club is a bit big and the watch is also already becoming harder to find, especially at the AD's here in the neighborhood.

It was some time ago that I realized that I really liked the Ingenieur Laureus. When I visited my local AD I asked him if he still had one in stock but as you would expect he had none left. Instead, he showed me the new Vintage Ingenieur with the brown dial but that didn't really fit my taste.

A while later, I heard about the blue Portofino Hand Wound 8-days and I was very excited to have a look at that one. A few pictures had leaked out before the official introduction and my hopes were up to (finally?) add a blue IWC to my collection.

The Portofino Hand Wound 8-days is a beautiful watch but it didn't really 'sing' to me when I held it in my hands and on my wrist. I left the AD empty handed and a bit disappointed. In the weeks that followed, I contemplated my decision but had no real regrets. Usually, that's a good reason not to buy the watch.

So, I started to look a bit harder for a good used example of the Ingenieur Laureus and in only a week or two, I had found one that just appeared. There was only one image available and when I called, I was told more images would come on Monday (July 29). I made a reservation and would decide depending on the new pictures to appear. Despite a busy day at work, I kept looking online to see if the images had already appeared and when they were finally there, they showed a watch in pristine condition. I immediately confirmed my reservation, arranged the payment and waited patiently for the watch to arrive.

On Wednesday, I was out of the office for meetings at customers almost the entire day but when I got back late in the afternoon, there was a parcel waiting on my desk! I still was too busy working and had to let the parcel unopened for a few more hours, which was tough!

Then, finally, I could open the box and have a peek. The box was a bit smaller than I expected (more on that later) but it contained a blue dialed IWC Ingenieur Vintage Laureus Edition in like new condition! I carefully took the watch out, looked at it from all sides and checked if the paperwork matched. Everything was fine!

I wound the watch carefully, set the time and date and strapped it on my wrist. It turned out to be exactly what I had hoped. The diameter; thickness; weight; dial color and legibility; it was simply perfect. A very nice touch is the red tip on the second hand.

Continuing with a very busy work week, tonight is the first moment for me to write down a few words and reveal this beauty to you.

So, here are a few pictures for you to enjoy:

Wrist shots in the car, waiting for the lights to turn green:

Look at that magnificent blue dial!

Did I mention already that the blue perfectly matches the dials of my Volvo V60 R-Design?

At the terrace at work. You can clearly see the domed crystal here:

I managed to sneak out again for a few minutes at around ten to two, a great time to take watch pictures :-)

So there you have it, my first Laureus! And when I checked the timing, it appears to be my most accurate too. I just looked at it and since I wound it on Wednesday afternoon, it has just gained four seconds until Friday evening late. Not bad, not bad at all!

As I promised you, I would come back to the box. It turned out to be a regular IWC box, not the Laureus one with the engraved plaquette. When I contacted the shop about it, they told me that they got it with this box and didn't have the Laureus box. They immediately offered me to send the watch back and get a refund but since otherwise everything is perfect, I decided to keep this one. Chances are that it will not see the box back in a long long time anyway! The lesson I learned is that in the future, I will ask more specific questions including about the box. Probably the excitement about finding a pristine example of this watch blurred me a bit.

I hope I didn't bore you too much with this long story, hopefully the pictures make up for it.